Capturing beauty of Orion Nebula

Hello. Nebula is one of the spectacular sight in a night sky. Nebula basically means a cloud of dust and hydrogen. Nebula is a place where stars are born. Incidentally some nebulae are formed after stars have died. When a star is burst in its last stage, it forms a nebula in surrounding region. In a way, Nebulae represent total journey of stars. One of the nebulae is Orion Nebula. Watching it through a telescope is a great experience.

Recently, I captured this beautiful nebula through my binocular and my smartphone and still I am not able to believe how it is captured! The cloudy region of the nebula, its expanse and even reddish colour highlighting massive interactions between the young stars and Hydrogen atoms! All this is captured through my small equipments. I am learning astrophotography.

My instagram handle. 

This image is the result of a stack of 635 frames of 2 seconds each. Total integration time is over 21 minutes. Every frame had ISO 1600. This is captured from Pimpri- Chinchwad. I used headphones as a remote button to avoid shaking the mobile while pressing the capture button. After every 20 seconds (around 10 images), I had to re-centre the nebula in the binocular to maintain proper alignment. I used Sequator for stacking and DeepSkycamera app for clear view. I captured the photos through Pro mode of my mobile Motorola G57. The binocular- Celestron 15 X 70. Used my 30 year old tripod! After stacking, just fine tuned the image in Snapseed. With just 21 minutes integration time, the result is wonderful!

Experiencing Kumaon Himalaya 5: Sky watching from Munsyari

✪  Interactions with a visually impaired singer
✪  Ursa Major, Arcturus and Pancha- Chuli peaks!
✪  Glorious night sky and star trails!
✪  Finally could capture the Moon- rise
✪  Joy of starry sky with the Milky way
✪  Warmth of tea in a dangerous cold climate!

Got up at 4 am on the dawn of 7th December. Extremely cold weather in Munsyari! But was too eager to watch the sky! Gathered some courage and came out of the room. Oh! What a sight this is! Ursa Major is up and so above the horizon! Of course, its reason being North position of Munsyari. Even yesterday night Cassiopeia constellation was also quite up. In the dawn, bright Jupiter, Regulus, Castor and Pollux, Sirius, Arcturus and Spica are shining! Many artificial satellites are also visible. Slowly the day is breaking. Observing through the telescope is very difficult. Removing the lid on the telescope was difficult! Fingers are getting numb. Observed through the telescope for some time. In the East, there is one bright star. It cannot be Venus. There is no such a bright star near Libra. Surely, it is Mercury. Observed it for half an hour!

 

Moonrise video- Moon rising from behind Pancha Chuli peaks
 

8 hour time-lapse video from Cassiopeia to Ursa Major

Fun and experiment no. 28

Experiment 28. Play of light and darkness

This is very simple. Find one such room that is closed and light does not enter it from anywhere. Open one window of that room in such a way that Sunlight should enter the room. Through the opening of the window, light should come only at a specific area. Observe what you see there. If in a dark room, there is a small lit space, then we observe dust particles there. Actually dust particles are everyhere. But they cannot be observed in light as they need contrasting background. They are also not visible in complete darkness. That's why they need both light as well as dark background to be visible. Dust particles reflect light, but we need a dark contrast to see that! And remember, we don't see anything, we actually see the LIGHT reflecting from it!

Activity 28. Have you seen stars in the day?

Similar to dust particles, we need light and darkness to observe rain drops in the night. In the light of lamps rain drops shine under the backdrop of darkness. Have you seen stars in the day? Except for one star, of course. One star is visible only in the day. But in the day, there are stars in the sky. But they are not visible as they need constrast. But a bright Moon is visible in day time also. And the third brightest object in our sky after the Sun and the Moon- Venus is also visible sometimes in the daylight. If we know its exact position in the sky, then we can see it as a tiny shining point in front of the blue sky!


प्रयोग 28. अंधार व प्रकाशाचा खेळ

हा प्रयोग अगदी सोपा आहे. एक अशी खोली शोधा जी बंद आहे आणि कुठूनही त्या खोलीत प्रकाश येत नाही. त्या खोलीची एक खिडकी थोडी उघडा. खिडकीतून सूर्यप्रकाश आत आला पाहिजे. झरोख्यातून फक्त एका मर्यादित जागेत प्रकाश पडेल अशी व्यवस्था करा. त्यावेळी तुम्हांला काय दिसतं ह्याचं निरीक्षण करा. अंधा-या खोलीत जर प्रकाशाची एक छोटी पट्टी असेल तर त्यात धुळीचे बारीक कण दिसतात. खरं तर सगळीकडे धुळीचे कण असतातच. पण ते प्रकाशात दिसत नाहीत कारण त्यांना विरुद्ध प्रकारची पार्श्वभूमी आवश्यक असते. आणि पूर्ण अंधारातही ते दिसू शकत नाहीत. म्हणून उजेड व अंधार दोन्ही‌ असताना ते दिसतात. धुळीच्या कणांवरून प्रकाश परिवर्तित होतो पण तो बघायला अंधाराची पार्श्वभूमी लागते! आणि हो, आपल्याला कोणतीच वस्तु दिसत नाही तर त्या वस्तुवरून परावर्तित होणारा प्रकाश फक्त दिसत असतो!

गंमत 28. दिवसा तारे बघितले आहेत का?

धुळीच्या कणांप्रमाणेच रात्री पाऊस पडताना बघण्यासाठी हेच आवश्यक असतं. दिव्याखालच्या प्रकाशात पाऊस दिसतो व त्यामागे असलेल्या अंधारात पावसाचे थेंब चमकतात. तुम्ही कोणी दिवसा तारे बघितले आहेत का? एक तारा सोडून. एक तारा फक्त दिवसाच दिसतो. दिवसाही आकाशात सगळे तारे असतात. पण ते दिसत नाहीत, कारण त्यांच्यासाठी अंधार आवश्यक असतो. पण ठळक असलेला चंद्र अनेकदा दिवसा दिसतो. आणि सूर्य व चंद्राखालोखाल आपल्या आकाशातला तिसरा तेजस्वी असलेला शुक्र मात्र कधी कधी दिवसा दिसतो. त्याची नेमकी जागा माहिती असेल तर तो दिवसाही निळ्या आकाशात एका बिंदूसारखा चमकताना दिसू शकतो!

A starry night show! तारें ज़मीं पर!!

Treat of sky treasures with students of Kalpana Chawla Space Academy

✪ A night long camp near the base of Tung fort, Lonawala
✪ Bliss for the children and what a treat the sky is
✪ “रात है या सितारों की बारात है!”
✪ Orion constellation? No, it is a huuuuge cluster!
✪ Excellent sky without light pollution and treasure of clusters
✪ Joy ride of the children in severe cold night
✪ Trek near Tung fort and new exposure for the children
✪ Remarkable experience of staying in wonderful nature

Hello all. Last weekend, I had a great opportunity to accompany the students of Kalpana Chawla Space Academy, Lonawala for a sky watching camp. While teaching them astronomy as a subject, sky watching is a regular activity. But watching the sky from city and from a remote place almost free from any light pollution is vastly different. Here it was all shining stars! These days such dark skies without any light pollution is a rarity. Actually it was a great delight. In astronomical terms, you could just see stars as faint as 5th magnitude with just your eyes. Those clusters which are difficult to spot in cities in a telescope, were readily observable here! Even finderoscope was sufficient! The great Omega Centauri cluster- it was visible to the naked eyes! When the early morning Venus suddenly erupted from behind the mountain, it was just a search light! But let’s begin from the beginning!

 

 

Sky watching session with kids and elders!

✪ International space station like a bright moving star!
✪ Saturn rings, Jupiter moons and orange Mars
✪ Beautiful Pleiades cluster- A scene of 400 years ago
✪ Moon craters and surface features
✪ Vast universe thrashes egoistic delusion
✪ Wonders to be watched just through eyes
✪ Zestful parents and energetic kids

Hello. Currently conditions are best for sky watching. Except for a few passing clouds, we can enjoy beautiful sky in the night. I got opportunity to show kids and elders the wonders of sky on the eve of 8th December when Ayurveda Vyaspeeth, Parbhani arranged a sky watching session. For this, first of all I thank Dr. Kanhe madam, Dr. Sandeep Chavan sir and their team, the organizers, the kids and also their parents. Here I would like to share which wonders we did enjoy and what fun we had. Recently I had taken such sessions for three consecutive days in Aurangabad, but the sky was not this clear there. On 8th December, the sky was so clear.

When some kids were still to come, we observed an interesting object. From north, a bright artificial satellite was visible. It was as bright as Jupiter and it was slowly moving towards East. It was visible for five- six minutes and then it went to South- East side and got out of sight. When I saw its speed and brightness, I felt this must be International Space Station- ISS. On the next day, I checked its timing and visibility location and then it was confirmed! So the kids who had come on time could also see the space station!

We started telescopic observation from Saturn. Everyone could enjoy its rings! Then we saw Jupiter and its four moons. Also within short time, we could also experience change in positions of the moons. Mars was in opposition recently (i.e. Sun- Earth- Mars in one line) and therefore it is much closer to the earth- at around 7.5 crore kms. Its red disk was visible in the telescope. The most beautiful object was Krittika cluster- Pleiades M45. Kids counted number of stars there. This cluster is located around 400 light years from us. That means the light departed from the cluster reaches us after 400 years. The light that travels 3 lac kilometers in a second! That means the stars we observe there are actually from the year 1600!

While observing this so much vast distance and stars much greater than Sun- forget our earth- makes us speechless. It is something like meditation. We always have delusions about us like I am someone special, this or that. Or my sorrow is greatest in the world. But when we see this infinitely vast sky, these delusions fade away! After the Pleiades, we saw the most thrilling objects for many- the Moon. Initially we saw with 20 magnification and later on also 50 magnification. Anytime one sees it, it is just beautiful and everyone likes it!